The New ISF

You may have seen stories about the ISF in the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, PC Magazine, Home Theater, Popular Mechanics, PC World, and Sound & Vision.

These and other publications simply present the information available at a point in time. ISF is a living - breathing thing, made up of professionals around the globe striving for video perfection from the movie set to the new HDR equipped display in the customer’s home theater. This year – as you can see in the next paragraph – the course has become more critical than ever before in the history of ISF. The technology changes that are rapidly coming to fruition must be fully understood and addressed in all aspects of picture quality in production and reproduction.

We are now in Phase 2 of the 10 year+ roll out of the road map of the 2012 ITU UHD TV features. The true cost of the new visually powerful advances is not the actual cost of the new TVs. The true cost is updating infrastructure, and mastering the new skills required to design, integrate and test the HDMI signal paths required to bring these features to our TV screens,

With the 2013 release of the HDMI 2.0(x) specification and the onset of 4K products and content and most recently the addition of High Dynamic Range functionality on even sub $1000 televisions calibration has become secondary to just getting the signal distributed. For these reasons, it is paramount to our mission of delivering the best picture available and matching the director’s intent to the end user – we must get the complete signal there first – from source to sink via all repeaters in the HDMI network.

Very few integrators have successfully taken the dive into distributing 4K with high dynamic range, wide color gamut, and deep color (10 & 12 bit) because the signal exceeds the limitations of most of the current infrastructure available today except for short HDMI cables. CEDIA integrators have either put in systems with faux K SDR (or in many cities we visited1080P SDR) or they have put the sources in the room with the HDR display – and this is not necessary.

For these reasons, we are proud to launch ISF Level III:

​Day 1: What it takes to get high value (>14Gbps) signals to the display and AVR with hands-on lab using fiber optic termination techniques. We will also discuss in-depth use of matrices, splitters, Cleerline Fiber, HDBaseT, and more.​

9:00 AM ~ Hands-on continues as instructor validates all systems are functioning and passing HDR, WCG and 10-bit signal over 100’, 200’ and 300’11:00 AM ~ ISFing a TV in 2017 – an overview of where we came from and where we are at today. What was difficult is now easy, and new complications arise12:00 PM ~ Video Display Setup – projectors and flat panels – the basics

Your ISF Instructor: Joel Silver

Joel Silver is the President and founder of the Imaging Science Foundation, Inc., which was incorporated in 1994 to introduce video image quality calibration services into consumer electronics. He volunteers as the chair of the CEA and CEDIA committee on Home Theater Video recommended practices. He also is the producer of the HDTV Calibration Wizard DVD. His work on advancing HDTV image quality was covered in the NY Times, the LA Times, Popular Mechanics, Wired and numerous A/V publications here and abroad. He has run research projects for the California Energy Commission documenting how video calibration produces significant energy savings, as well as consulting for high-end video, high-end audio, telemedicine, medical management, Microsoft Media Center Edition PCs and the Venture Capital and Entrepreneurship program at the W. Averill Harriman School of Management.

In the A/V industry, he has presented at CES, American Association of Medical Instrumentation, Barco BE, CEDIA Australia, EHExpo, INFOCOMM, ISE Brussels, ISE Singapore, NESDA, NSCA, Microsoft’s WINHEC, received both top five and top ten CEDIA instructor awards, and is a CE PRO top-ten-for-ten-years most influential industry leader.He has written articles for Audio Video Interiors, Forbes, Home Entertainment, Millionaire Magazine, Popular Science, Stereophile, Telemedicine Today Ultimate A/V, Video, Widescreen Review ands numerous other publications.